


After

by domesticadventures



Series: hilariously late christmas prompts [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Headspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-16 22:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7287604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a memory he has from when he was young, back when he was just a boy and the moon was just the moon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After

**Author's Note:**

> during christmas 2015 i foolishly asked for prompts, thinking i would get them done before the holidays were over. that obviously didn't happen. then i promised myself i'd get them all done before half the year had passed so at least they'd be published closer to christmas 2015 than christmas 2016, but it looks like that's not gonna happen, either. so here i am, posting them as i finish them, because otherwise who knows when these damn things will be published.
> 
> anyway, this one is for [shellie](http://robenedicts.tumblr.com/) <3
> 
> prompt: lupin + sunflowers

He thinks, sometimes, that if he had known what was going to happen, he would have tried harder to hold onto everything that came before. Done something differently.

He doesn’t know what, exactly. Written things down, maybe, in his slow, painstaking child’s handwriting. Smiled for pictures instead of shying away from the camera. Savored every small, simple moment a little more.

_Hindsight is 20/20,_ he thinks, hating himself for it. He’s already heard enough trite platitudes to last a lifetime. He’s sick of them, of every meaningless reassurance, every empty promise.

He prefers raw, brutal honesty. He prefers the _truth._

Here is his reality, horrible and aching like an open wound: his entire life has become one big _after._

\--

There’s a memory he has from when he was young, back when he was just a boy and the moon was just the moon.

There’s a field of sunflowers as far as the eye can see, and he’s walking along the edge between his parents, his hands in theirs, soft and steady. They swing him between them, cheerfully, easily, their delighted laughter echoing his own. The sun is bright in his eyes and warm on his face, and everything smells of life and growth and the green of spring.

It grows dimmer with every passing day, becomes pale and faded like another old scar.

\--

No sunflowers grow near his home, and there is no money to spare for such things, not after all the years spent chasing cures as fleeting and intangible as his fading memories.

He finds the money, anyway. Picks up spare change on the street, saves every scrap he can find. He collects one flower after another, breathes them in slowly as he tries to remember that feeling -- of standing in the sun, of living in anything but its pale shadow.

He puts them in vases, hangs them from the ceiling to dry, presses them between the pages of his books. He tucks petals into his pockets for appointment after appointment, trip after trip to another place or person that has managed to sell his parents on the idea of hope. 

He stops for a while during grade school, gets tired enough of his classmates’ cruel laughter, their biting jeers, that he shoves his entire collection into a box, shoves the box into the darkest corner of his closet.

It doesn’t stick. When he pulls them back out, months later, he tells himself it’s because he learned to stop caring.

It’s easier than admitting he realized he was going to be an outcast whether he kept his sunflowers or not.

\--

He stops again a few years later, when he’s finally at Hogwarts. When, for the first time, he has friends who know his secret and go on being his friends.

Of all the wonderful things at Hogwarts, of all the things that defy belief, it is this that truly feels like magic.

Later, he keeps their photographs in his wallet, pressed against his precious petals until they, too, are dried and fading.

Until they, too, smell like a bitter _before._

\--

Before he can lose Tonks and their unborn child, he tries to let her go. It would be a kindness, after all. He knows this from a lifetime of experience.

She’s always been stubborn, though. She won’t let him have that. Won’t let him define his life by before and after _her._

His last thought is of how, in her life, there will be a period before and after _him._

Their son, at least, will be too young to make the distinction.

\--

When he opens his eyes, he is surrounded by white.

There’s a certain familiarity to it, this place. After all, he’s been seeing this station his whole life; saw it every day in the whites of eyes widened in fear, in rows of perfect teeth revealed in nervous, jeering laughter, in smiles people sent his way like they were baring their fangs. He saw it every month in the glow of the full moon. He’s been waiting for this train since he was a child.

It pulls silently into the station, doors sliding open.

When he steps inside, it smells of sunflowers.


End file.
